


you're not so brave

by deadstarsstillburn



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Pre-Season/Series 15, Surreal, Yorklina mention, blood mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-26 01:17:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13225146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadstarsstillburn/pseuds/deadstarsstillburn
Summary: It occurs to her again, this time without the presence of a gun behind her, that she does not know the man she’s speaking to. Maybe never did. Never really tried to.Or, the aftermath of the 100 Tex Battle spun a little differently.





	you're not so brave

**Author's Note:**

> [Angry dialogue](http://tuckerfuckingdidit.tumblr.com/post/160352729885/angry-angsty-memes) prompt fill for [Hinn_Raven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hinn_raven/pseuds/hinn_raven): "Where were you?"

Carolina doesn’t open the door to the room that holds her father. The sight of blood seeping from under the door, ink-dark and growing steadily, wracks her body with a shudder. She doesn’t even make it all the way down the hall.

She and Epsilon decide between themselves that he must go back. Caboose, he says. Caboose will not be the same without him. Carolina does not want to admit how quickly she adjusted to having Epsilon in her head, a single, steady thread filling the blanks her voice can’t on its own, when she has neither the words nor the seconds to spare.

She’ll give him back, not because she doesn’t want to keep him, but because of the guilt that will follow her if she neglects to return him to his friends. AI or not, that’s what they are. And in that regard, this fragment has a fuller life than she does.

It doesn’t matter.

She knows how to be alone now.

She just didn’t want to be.

Some time during the drive back, the weariness of enduring that battle alone (impossible if not for Epsilon ending it prematurely), trades itself in for anger.

 _Let me do the talking_ , Epsilon hedges nervously.

_Not a chance._

She speaks the second Wash comes into view, seated in the base’s common area, cleaning their weapons. His armor is stripped and piled in a corner. _Comfortable already._ The fire in her chest snaps like it’s been fed fuel. She wrenches her helmet off and stows it under an arm, a move she nearly regrets when he looks up and meets her eyes. “You know, I actually thought for a moment you were going to show up.”

Silence.

She speaks again, sharper. “We almost didn’t make it _back._ ”

“Sorry to hear that,” he says, and there’s a trace of that same tone from the last time he spoke to her. Bitterness.

He resents her.

Maybe he should.

“The one time I needed your help.” It’s manipulative and she doesn’t care, she is _so tired_.

His eyes narrow. “Don’t do that. You won’t like it if I play that game back.”

But she can’t stop now. “I ask you to help me with _one thing_ —”

“You put a _gun_ to Tucker’s head!”

“He was being insubordinate, we didn’t have time—”

“ _You’re not his commanding officer!_ ”

She freezes.

He’s on his feet now. She’s only ever heard Wash shout in fear. Irritation during drills on Chorus. Never at her. Just as suddenly, he quiets again, fists clenched. “And you’re not mine.”

The words sink into her bones,

 _not mine_  
_not mine_  
_not mine_

until she hears the ones he won’t say:

_not good enough._

  
“Where did you go when you went over the cliff, Carolina.” It’s a question, but so blunted it more resembles a demand.

For that reason alone, she doesn’t want to tell him.

_how does he know there was a cliff?_

  
His voice is quiet, yet fierce. “Where were you when our team was being picked off by the Meta?”

She knows what’s coming next. She couldn’t speak even if she wanted to.

“Where were you when Maine _died?_ ”

She has to say _something_.

“Wash—”

His gaze is sharp and accusing. “Where **_were you_**?”

She looks away from him.

When she can drag her eyes back to him again, he shakes his head. “The Reds and Blues wanted to go after you.”

She wets her lips. “What did you tell them?”

“I told them the truth. That you aren’t worth dying for. That you don’t care about them.”

“That’s not true.”

He continues like he hadn’t heard. “That you’d bring Epsilon back when you were done.”

At those words, Epsilon appears at her shoulder. “Yeah, well here I am, fucker, so—”

“I’m not talking to you,” Wash says flatly, not even looking at Epsilon. “This is between her and me.”

Church stutters, but ultimately disappears in a huff, grumbling a few choice words about Wash being an asshole.

It occurs to her again, this time without the presence of a gun behind her, that she does not know the man she’s speaking to. Maybe never did.

Never really tried to.

It wasn’t that she’d disliked him. Hell, she’d liked him better than most. They were the best and the worst in their squad: off the field, he looked up to her. Liked her jokes. Flustered easily when she flirted, just like he was supposed to.

In the field, they were a disaster initially. He hung back too far for mid-range. When he moved in, he got in her way. She ironed out those kinks. Wouldn’t accept anyone who couldn’t keep up, and wasn’t a stranger to applying elbow grease for the sake of unit cohesion. Not when lives were at stake.

She saw the way he looked at her. But York was more aggressive, more outgoing. York planted himself directly in her line of sight. He wanted to be seen. She liked what she saw.

Wash never stood a chance.

 _how could he?_  
_you were too intimidating,_  
_too hard to keep up with,_  
_and you haven’t changed._

Now he’s done trying.

_you lost him._

Silence hangs.

“I wasn’t going to shoot Tucker,” Carolina says finally.

“I don’t care.”

She doesn’t need another elevator shaft to recognize an ending crashing down on her when she sees one.

“Fine.” She pulls Epsilon’s chip without so much as a goodbye to him, sets it on the table beside a pistol, because even gloved, she can’t take touching Wash.

If she touches him, she’ll say what she isn’t: sorry.

Again and again and again, until he tells her to stay.

There are thirteen steps between her and the way she came. Thirteen steps to take her out the door and out of his and the Reds and Blues’ lives forever. Just like at the storage facility, she expects him to intervene at the last second.

He doesn’t stop her. Instead, on step seven he calls to Caboose and tells him that Church is back.

“Who was that?” she hears as she crosses the threshold.

“No one,” Wash says, and it’s not the words but the ease with which he delivers them that cuts her.

And then, rather than staring out her helmet at the view of the setting sun, she is watching herself walk toward a Mongoose.

At the same time, she’s watching Wash, too, and the way his mouth never turns down at the corners as he listens to Caboose, how he doesn’t grasp for the bridge of his nose when he eventually greets a bleary-eyed Tucker. She is gone, but still she watches for any sign that the events of today have disturbed Wash even a little, until it’s impossible for her to come to any conclusion other than what all signs point to: _no_.

He won’t miss her.

No one will.

**

If the stuff of nightmares is to be judged by what fills them—Maine holding her by her throat, Eta and Iota’s screaming voices followed by _pain pain pain_ and then nothing at all; the fall from cliff after cliff; Wash screaming as he plummets in front of the Purge, Felix empty-handed at the end of her grappling hook, until the shout halts as suddenly as it started; Tucker’s sightless eyes appearing out from under Maine’s blood-smeared helmet, Epsilon nowhere to be found—Carolina’s have a certain... consistency.

She isn’t sure she would call this a nightmare. But it leaves the same unease curdling in the pit of her stomach, the same tight, heavy pressure tangled in her chest, trembling limbs cold and near to numbness. When she wakes, Wash is asleep next to her, safe and sound, the way he’s been every night since the war ended, even before construction on these new bases began.

His breath is slow and steady, a mockery of her short intakes. She wants to wake him up so he can tell her this is real, that she won’t turn over and be on a pallet inside of a closet-sized room, empty-handed for reasons to get up in the morning.

She wants Epsilon to call her dramatic.

She can't have the latter, and she won't let herself take the former.

She’s concerned she’s somehow done exactly that by accident when Wash shifts and rolls over. Carolina freezes, but instead of rolling away and getting out of bed, Wash flops half on top of her, still asleep. His dead weight on her chest sends her breath rushing out of her even faster.

 _you’re fine_  
_he’s fine_

She can get up if she has to.

She’s not trapped.

She takes a deep breath. Holds it. Lets it sail silently past her lips in time with the concave of Wash’s ribs on hers. Focuses on the heat of his body, his breath hot on her neck, until she can finally raise a hand to his back like she usually does on the nights she can stand this, when his weight lulls her to sleep rather than sending her squirming out from under him. Wash sprawls in bed if you let him. Maybe it’s his way of taking what he can’t ask for when he’s awake.

She breathes in time with him for one minute, then two, then five, until the shaking in her hands has melted away like her chill in the face of his warmth.

It was a dream. At this hour, Caboose is down the hall, snore louder than thunder. Tucker and Kai are settling in the second floor den with a data pad, clutching their early-morning coffee to carry them through their weekly video call with Junior.

Wash is drooling on her neck. She doesn’t move him.

Across the way, the Reds might still have their lights on. Might not. She and Wash picked these rooms because they didn’t want to know—didn’t want to stare and wait for the next 3 am mishap. In the morning her family will shuffle out of their rooms to breakfast. She’ll shower, leave her hair unbraided, and when it dries in a poofy mess, Wash will give her the same dopey look he always does whenever he sees her unexpectedly uncomposed.

It will be life on the moon, as usual, and no one will know the cold gaze Carolina has spent hours trying not to envision every time she closes her eyes.

A dream.

Not her typical kind of nightmare, but it qualifies nonetheless.

Wash breathes. She listens, breathing along with him, soothed by the cadence of their mingled heartbeats. By the time he slides off of her, she has already been pulled back into uneventful sleep.

When they rise from bed together later, she doesn’t say a thing.


End file.
